Young Indian American Dreams Up 'Unamerican' Shock Therapy

Madona Devasahayam

He is a rebel with a cause, an Indian with an Unamerican dream. Srini Kumar,
26, took a road not taken in April 1994, creating Unamerican Activities, an
outfit based in San Francisco that propagates a counter culture which "f**ks
work" and where "decaf sucks."

His mission is to get people to question the conventional, mainstream ways
in society and thus form a force of like-minded people. And he does this by
selling wacky, thought-provoking slogans to his audience through what he
calls "media objects" -- stickers, coffee mugs, buttons and T-shirts.

The company sells its merchandise online and through tattoo and clothing
boutiques. Its website was nominated in the weird category in the
recently-concluded Webby Awards

"I am pushing the envelope of what it means to be Indian," Kumar said in a
telephone interview recently.

In his own words, neatly posted on the website www.unamerican.com,
'Unamerican Activities creates 'provoking' art. We manufacture "tools to
help you f**king matter." The whole thing is that this is a country with a lot
of tedium in it, a lot of boring people and objects and institutions.

'Together, these form a system which, I believe, constitutes a huge
obstacle to joy. The struggle of all provocateurs is to challenge this obstacle, and ultimately create counter-objects that help others overcome it.'

A graduate in sociology from Stanford University, Kumar started Unamerican
Activities as his experiment in memetics, the theoretical and empirical
science that studies the replication, spread and evolution of memes.

Memes is an information pattern, held in an individual's memory, which is
capable of being copied to another individual's memory. "What I am doing is
throwing memes at the public that run counter to mainstream," he said.

Little did he expect his experiment to end up as a virtual religion. "I am
constantly surprised by the positive response this gets and the diversity
of the audience," he said.

It all began in Fort Wayne, Indiana, where he had taken up a job as a
computer software seller. "I traveled a lot in that job but it was hard,"
Kumar said. While in Fort Wayne, he began spending a lot of time in a punk
rock record store there started by two 18 year olds. "I was paging through
[one of the owner's] sticker collection and I was like, 'All of these are just ads for bands. You know, there are no politics here at all. Maybe
other than 'Mean People Suck’ there's nothing. So that made me think, 'OK. I love slogans. So let's make some slogans.' "

And that was the day at the job he clicked out the letters "F**k Work." and
got the stickers made.

'I took click tape and photocopied the sticker larger and larger. So I
actually made it at work. It was like, $ 40 for 250 stickers. And um, $ 30
started my company. Basically I took those 250 stickers to Gilman Street [a
punk club in Berkeley] and soon had $ 250. Slowly things started going from there,' he told a magazine recently.

Kumar strongly believes in stickers having the potential of starting really
enriching dialogue among people. "When you give a 'F**k Work' sticker away
you end up really just creating contact without even trying. And so, that
is the nature of Unamerican Activities. It's really just me motivating people
to dialogue amongst themselves," he said.

Besides his media objects, the Internet has been the key to opening up his
world to a larger audience. "We entered the business at an exciting point
in Internet technology and were able to strike a cool space. It connects
people globally and can be accessed anytime," he said.

Unamerican Activities is currently run by three individuals, Kumar, his
fiancée Robynn Takayama and James Reling. The company is soon to be
incorporated and the merchandise expanded. Kumar declined to disclose the
financial worth of his venture, saying that negotiations with investors
were on.

"Companies did try to buy us out a few years ago, but it is Srini's art
project and he would never do that," Takayama said. "I strongly believe in
this culturally and it has potential politically," she added. In fact,
Kumar proposes to grow and nurture his movement to a political party which will look at national issues that are largely overlooked by politicians today.

One of them is the concept of work itself. "Yes, jobs are increasing and
unemployment is decreasing, but what about the quality of work? There are
people who are stuck with not so great jobs. I want to focus on using one's
potential correctly," he said.

Kumar has not got enough feedback from the Indian community in the United
States. "Most of the Indians here are young, students from affluent
backgrounds who would definitely embrace radical ideas. But I have not got
too much feedback from adult Indians here," he said.

"We have not really penetrated into India because of accessibility
problems. Being a fringe website, not many find it. It is like a secret that some
discover while surfing," Takayama said.

So how is the word on the movement getting out into the world? "We do
guerilla marketing, rely on word of mouth basically," she said.

Kumar has in place a "conspiracy list of 5,000 kids" who get the information
about the ideas out. "They are the company's information army," he said.
"But we depend on the very idea behind memetics -- a friend of yours telling
it to you," he added. Unamerican Activities has a 50,000-strong email list
that comprises people from all over the world, predominantly the United States, Germany, Japan, Canada and England.

Kumar has huge plans for his movement. He is proposing a book on micro
business which deals with entrepreneurship. Besides, books and music
associated with his philosophy is being added to his merchandise list. "As
a kid I read a lot of science fiction and listened to punk rock," he said.

"When I look at myself, I am a portrait of somebody who will not be happy
with simple answers. I look for complexity and shake things up," he said.
And sure he is. May the force be with him!